CVE-2022-42396
Published: 26 January 2023
Summary
CVE-2022-42396 is a high-severity Untrusted Pointer Dereference (CWE-822) vulnerability in Pdf-Xchange Pdf-Xchange Editor. Its CVSS base score is 7.8 (High).
Operationally, ranked in the top 47.7% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2022-45470
Vulnerability details
This vulnerability allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code on affected installations of PDF-XChange Editor. User interaction is required to exploit this vulnerability in that the target must visit a malicious page or open a malicious file. The specific flaw…
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exists within the parsing of XPS files. The issue results from the lack of proper validation of a user-supplied value prior to dereferencing it as a pointer. An attacker can leverage this vulnerability to execute code in the context of the current process. Was ZDI-CAN-18278.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
No named actor attribution yet. ATT&CK technique mapping in progress for this CVE.
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Likely Mitigating Controls AI
Per-CVE control mapping for this CVE has not run yet; the list below is derived from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry.
Ongoing control assessments and code testing (static/dynamic analysis, fuzzing) surface memory buffer restriction failures, which are then remediated before release.
Managed runtimes used by platform-independent applications (e.g., JVM, CLR) enforce memory safety, preventing most buffer overflows that require direct memory manipulation.
Memory protections (e.g., W^X, ASLR) make exploitation of buffer-boundary violations far harder to turn into code execution.
Detects exploitation attempts that produce memory corruption, crashes, or anomalous behavior.